Forbes' Gibbs on E-Cat Fraud Claims

An article by Mark Gibbs has been published at Forbes.com discussing some of the skeptical responses to the recent 3rd Party E-Cat test. The title of the article is “Rossi’s A Fraud! No, He’s Not! Yes, He Is! No, He Isn’t!” and it looks at some of the charges leveled at the Rossi and the test by critics.

It’s somewhat of a tortured piece. Gibbs states that there is no credible evidence of fraud being involved and he considers it unlikely that the testers were in on a scam, or that Rossi had rigged his premises to give fake indications of excess heat, but he allows that there is an outside possibility that fraud could have taken place.

Gibbs says he is more persuaded by the arguments against the E-Cat on the grounds that the rules of science don’t allow for cold fusion — but having said, he says you can’t discount “something interesting” going on given the experimental evidence that has been published over the years.

Gibbs postulates four possibilities about the test and gives his opinion of its likelihood:

1. Rossi is a fraud and the testing was a fraud (i.e. the testers were in on the scam) . . . highly unlikely.
2. Rossi is a fraud and the testers were incompetent and or hoodwinked . . . more likely than option 1, but implausable
3. Rossi is not a fraud and the E-Cat works as claimed. Of the three previous options this is the least implausible but the hardest to believe given what science and scientists tell us.
4: Rossi is not a fraud and the E-Cat works but it’s not LENR. Of all the options, this is the most plausible but it’s still very hard to believe.

He seems to be honestly conflicted — and that is probably the case with many people observing this story. Gibbs concludes by saying if you held a gun to his head and demanded he take a stand he would say the E-Cat didn’t work, but since there is no gun pointing at him he is going to stay on the fence. He’s certainly interested enough in it to keep writing on the topic, and I hope he continues. This is a topic that I believe deserves the attention of the public, and Gibbs and Forbes deserve credit for not ignoring it.